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Former governor Mitt Romney’s serial gaffes seem to be doing cumulative damage not just to his own campaign, but to Senate and even House races. In the days since Romney’s clumsy attempt to make political gain from the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Politico’s piece revealing ineptitude and finger-pointing at the Republican National Convention, and the leak of the infamous “47-Percent” video, Democratic Senate candidates in most contested seats have opened up leads, according to usually trustworthy polls. In Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren is up by six points over Scott Brown. Tim Kaine leads George Allen by seven or eight points in Virginia. Tammy Baldwin is at least even with Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. And in Florida and Ohio, incumbents Ben Nelson and Sherrod Brown have benefitted from the swing of support to Obama and are holding solid leads. Once long shot Democratic senate candidates in Missouri and North Dakota now seem competitive, partly due to local gaffes by their...

A third of Voters Less Likely to Support Romney Due to Video A new Gallup poll shows that 36% of voters are less likely to vote for Mitt Romney as a result of the video in which he said that 47% of of Americans are dependent on government and consider themselves victims. In contrast, 20% said they were more likely to vote for him. The rest weren't swayed one way or the other. Among independents, 29% said they were now less likely to vote for him while only 15% were more likely. An Ipsos poll also just released has similar results: 43% of the registered voters view Romney less favorably as a result of the video. Only 26% felt better about Romney. While the details of the video will be forgotten in a few weeks, the lingering image of Romney as someone who does not care about half the country could remain and hurt him. Click here for full story

Two new polls over the weekend showed Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren maintaining her post-convention lead over Scott Brown. One poll by the Springfield Republican newspaper shows a six-point lead, with Warren at 50 percent to the Republican incumbent Scott Brown's 44 percent. Public Policy Polling shows her with a two-point edge among likely voters, at 48 percent to 46 percent. The race has been a true toss up, with both popular candidates holding a lead at various times in what is, overall, a close race. The problem for Warren as a challenger has always been that voters like Scott Brown, and generally approve of the job he's doing. She's had to make them like her better, which is a challenge for any newcomer, even a naturally good candidate like Warren. When I spoke to a few volunteers in July, they were worried about Brown's appeal—they had knocked on a number of doors of voters who felt Brown was a nice man, and they didn't know Warren. These polls show, more than anything...

Americans Think Obama Will Win A new Wapo/ABC poll shows that 59% of the voters think President Obama will be reelected vs. 34% who think Mitt Romney will win. Note that this is a completely different question than who the voter supports. The polling data on who people will vote for gave Obama a mere 3% lead, 49% to 46%. In other words, there are millions of voters who want Romney to win but don't expect him to do so. Another take on this is to look at the betting site intrade.com where bettors are giving Obama a 67% chance and Romney a 33% chance. That is 2 to 1. Romney's problem is that he has tanked in the past week, presumably due to the furor around his criticism of President Obama, before he knew all the facts concerning the riots in Egypt and Libya, where four American diplomats were killed. Here is a chart of Romney's chances for the past 30 days. Click here for full story

President Obama’s convention bounce shows no sign of subsiding. Yesterday’s Fox News poll shows him with a five-point lead over Romney among likely voters—48 to 43 percent—and he continues to lead in the Gallup tracking poll, which shows him with a six lead over the Republican nominee, 50 to 44 percent. It’s hard to overstate how dangerous this is for Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency. Conventions are one of the few points when candidates can shift the race and make meaningful gains. This makes sense—they’re little more than long, effusive advertisements, broadcast by major media outlets and seen by tens of millions of Americans. But while conventions can do a huge amount to change the dynamics of a presidential race, things tend to stabilize afterward. In their new book The Timeline of Presidential Elections , political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien explain the extent to which conditions harden in the post-convention period: It is easy to imagine that many...

It looks like another Iowa Supreme Court justice may lose his job this year. Conservatives are once again railing against one of the judges who legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent social conservative on the local scene who led an anti-retention campaign against three of the state's supreme court justices in 2010, announced last month that he was spearheading an effort to make sure David Wiggins doesn't succeed at the polls this November. A Public Policy Polling survey from last week indicates that Vander Plaats's plan is working. Among likely Iowa voters, 38 percent would like to retain Wiggins, while another 38 percent want to send him home. While at first glance that tie might seem positive for Wiggins—in 2010 two of his colleagues lost by 8 percent, one by a ten-point margin—the dynamics don't favor Wiggins. Many of those likely voters supporting Wiggins might not vote in the retention election—judicial retention votes were notoriously under the...

Since I write about politics for a living, my family and friends often ask me for my opinions about matters political, and in recent days these queries have taken on an edge—not quite panic, but let's call it worry. "Romney doesn't really have a chance, does he?" one person asked me yesterday with a quaver in her voice. Well, sure he has a chance, I replied. I'm still fairly confident that Obama is going to win in the end, but Romney does have a chance. Which brings us to this week and the Republican convention. Right now, the race is essentially tied. If you look at averages of the polls, you see anything from an Obama advantage of about a point (that's what the Pollster.com average has, as does the Real Clear Politics average ) to a Romney advantage of half a point (that's what the TPM average has). On the other hand, everybody sees a substantial advantage for Obama in the electoral college. But this is a good time for liberals to prepare themselves for something: at the end of this...

So far in his campaign for the presidency, Mitt Romney has had four big chances to move the needle in his direction. At the beginning, when he won the Republican nomination; during June, when it became clear that the economy was slowing down; last month, when he went abroad; and two weekends ago, when he chose Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate. In no case did he see a meaningful boost. Consolidating Republicans behind his candidacy garnered him a 45 percent vote share—the floor for either the Democratic or Republican nominee—and choosing Ryan as his running mate gave him a boost of one percentage point—four points below the median vice-presidential bump. Here is what the race has looked like since April , when the general election began in earnest: For all the gaffes and controversies, nothing has changed. President Obama continues to hold a small but steady lead over Romney, and Romney remains unable to break past the 45-percent threshold. The latest poll from...

This morning, The New York Times and CBS News, with Quinnipiac University, released their latest set of swing state polls, for Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado. In the Old Dominion, Obama leads Romney by four points—49 to 45—and in the Badger State, he leads the Republican nominee by six, 51 to 45. These numbers are in line with previous surveys; in both states, Obama has led in ten of the last 11 polls, with an average lead of 2.8 points for Virginia, and 5.8 points for Wisconsin. Colorado is a little different. According to the NYT , CBS News and Quinnipiac University, Romney leads there by 5 points, 50 to 45. This is out of line with previous surveys; for most of the summer, Obama has maintained a narrow but persistent lead in the state. Today marks the first time Romney has ever been ahead in Colorado: This should make us suspicious. If the race in Colorado were truly a toss-up, then Romney should be ahead as much as he is behind. Moreover, it’s unusual for a candidate to gain...

This November, voters in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado have the chance to do something radical: legalize marijuana for recreational use. In all three states, activists secured enough petition signatures to place initiatives on the ballot to essentially treat cannabis like alcohol, regulating its distribution and taxing it. The three states already allow patients with ailments like cancer and AIDS to use marijuana; Colorado allows dispensaries, which make for a bigger and broader semi-decriminalized system. But if these initiatives pass, they would be the first allowing anyone who doesn't have (or claim to have) a medical need to use marijuana. One poll shows the Washington initiative passing by a 13-point margin, while a poll in Colorado predicts an even bigger margin in favor. These polls should be read skeptically, but they suggest the strong possibility that at least one of these initiatives could succeed. If that happens, it will raise a whole slew of questions for the country...

In presidential polling, the whole must eventually equal the sum of its parts. If a candidate has a consistent lead on the state level, then it will eventually show up in national polls. The opposite is also true; if a candidate takes a sharp decline in national polls, then that will also be reflected on the state level. Last week, Nate Silver noted the extent to which that hasn’t been true of this election. Nationally, the race is a near-tie between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But in state polls, Obama maintains a clear lead over the Republican nominee. By calculating a value called the “implied national vote”—the difference between the current polling average and the 2008 results—Silver finds that based on state polling, you should expect a 3- to 4-point lead for Obama in national surveys. This isn’t to say that the race is actually less close than it looks—the state polls might end up overstating Obama’s strength—but to offer some context for the continued discrepancy between...

In a new poll, Gallup asks voters to rank their priorities for the next president. Unsurprisingly, the top answer is “jobs,” followed by “reducing corruption in the federal government,” and “reducing the federal budget deficit.” Here are the full results: Writing at the Washington Examiner , Byron York cites this as evidence that the Obama campaign is out of step with the public: The point is that Americans prioritize what they want their political leaders to do, and right now, the things that are on top of the voters’ list — creating jobs, reducing corruption, and cutting the deficit — are issues that Mitt Romney and Republicans in Congress have been stressing every day. And the goals the president has been stressing are simply not at the top of voters’ concerns. This might be true for reducing corruption, which is a key theme for Mitt Romney. But I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say that voters are genuinely concerned with cutting the deficit, and it’s simply wrong to claim that...

Responding to arguments that Mitt Romney is stronger than he looks, The New Republic ’s Nate Cohn notes the degree to which Romney’s resiliency—in the face of attacks and gaffes—is a natural consequence of polarization in the electorate. In other words, it doesn’t actually tell us anything about the direction of the election: If Romney was above 50 percent and withstood a month of bad press, that would be a real sign of resilience. But Romney’s not at 50 percent; he’s at 45 percent. And that essentially means that Romney holds the reliably Republican vote, and not very much more. The polls tell us that nearly all of these voters disapprove of Obama’s performance and that most are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. History suggests that they have voted for Republicans in recent elections—for instance, in 2008, McCain won 45.9 percent of the vote in a hostile political climate. So 45 percent is a logical floor for Romney, given the intensity of Republican opposition to...

Yet another poll shows President Obama with a commanding lead among Latino voters. According to a survey commissioned by NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and Telemundo, Obama leads Romney 67 percent to 23 percent among Latino registered voters. Romney’s favorability with Latinos is incredibly negative, with 22 percent saying they have a positive view of the former Massachusetts governor, and 44 percent saying they have a negative view. Moreover, Romney hasn’t convinced Latinos that he would be effective on the economy; 53 percent say that Obama has better ideas to improve the economy, compared to 22 percent for Romney. Overall, 58 percent of Latinos approve of Obama’s handling of the economy. It should be said that this has the virtue of being true; Romney’s plan for the economy—a series of small bore measures to increase energy production and bolster trade relationships—would have a small affect on the short-term economy. And his tax plan, which ends several stimulus related tax...

The early barrage of negative ads has made voters dislike both Obama and Romney. A new poll shows that 43 percent of Americans hold a somewhat or very negative view of President Obama (up from 37 percent a year ago) and 40 percent have a somewhat or very negative view of Mitt Romney (up from 26 percent a year ago). Historically these are very high negatives for so early in the season. The vast amount of negative advertising on tap for the Fall is only going to make it worse. It will be a miracle if the winner can govern at all with half the country hating him. Romney SuperPACs Have Spent $144 Million so Far Republican SuperPACs have been running television ads at a furious rate, spending $144 million on general election ads in swing states so far. All of them are negative ads attacking President Obama rather than praising Mitt Romney's business expertise. Karl Rove's two groups, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads, together have spent $94 million on TV ads, five times as much as...